


the wild ones

by prairiewolf



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), F/M, First Time, Fluff, Kissing, Mike Wheeler Loves Eleven | Jane Hopper, Summer, Teens being teens, The 5 senses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 14:25:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18367859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiewolf/pseuds/prairiewolf
Summary: A summer in Hawkins, and what it's like being sixteen





	1. the wild one, the destroyer (sight)

That summer, Dustin teaches her how to fry ants with a magnifying glass (Mike is stocking shelves at Bradley’s Big Buy), but it, ah, doesn’t go so well, and while Dustin charms Mrs. Whitlock into _please_ not calling the authorities, there won’t be any more noise, scout’s honor, El surreptitiously repairs the hole in her wrought-iron fence.

Later, while El wrings her hands, Dustin recounts the story to Mike, grinning against the bag of frozen peas on his black eye - It. Was. _Awesome_.

That same summer, it rains so much during the Hawkins-Seelyville baseball game that the pitch floods before the 7th inning, and a family of ducks moves into the dugout.

Hawkins doesn’t have Animal Control and Callahan can’t get the ducks out (it’s probably for lack of trying) so fine, groans Hop, it’ll have to dry up eventually. It’s Will who, a few nights a week, helps El drag coolers of water and a loaf of bread to the field. Dugout Pond lasts well after the ducks have grown and gone.

That same summer, Mike and El come down with matching colds, and Lucas brings whiskey and oranges and honey and cloves to the Wheelers’ basement, and they all get drunk on hot toddies and watch Return of the Jedi, talking like ewoks all night. All their throats are sore the next day.

That summer, still, Mike presses his forehead to hers and just…stares, breathless and wide-eyed, and mouths the words _love you forever_ before biking home.


	2. small footprints (sound)

In this part of the woods, it’s never quite quiet, but the cabin in the summertime seems especially loud. The wood floors groan underfoot, swelling in the humidity, and by the shrill whine around them, the walls are badly infested with termites.

Still, it’s not unwelcoming. The lights work and the faucet’s got water, and when Mike draws the moss green shades closed, it’s cozier somehow. He lays a quilt on the ground, folds it in half, and when she’s stretched out on it with Nancy’s lavender sleep mask over her eyes, he takes the Koss PortaPro headphones out of his backpack and fits them over her ears – they pooled together three paychecks for a pair from Radioshack.

Then, with the quilt and the mask and the headphones, she slips into the dark place. While she’s there, he sits right beside her, hand over hers, breathing deeply, squeezing back _I'm here with you_ when she squeezes his fingers. Sometimes she’ll call for him, mewling in a faraway voice the way a ghost might, and he’ll answer _you’re safe, I’m still here_ even though she can’t hear him (somehow though it calms her).

She can stay under longer knowing he’s there, that he could yank her back to the light if she needed him to, but today, she returns with a soft inhale, and when she pulls the mask off, her blinking eyes are swollen and red.

He hugs her.

_Bad time?_

_Not bad._ She sighs into him. _Mama was there._


	3. oh you wondrous creature (touch)

It’s Nancy’s idea (of course), being home for the summer and likely bored, and anyway, it’s a special occasion.

_So why not_ , she says, extending a hand, and El can’t think why not, so she takes it.

Mike says makeup is a kind of torture, like public shaming or something, and anyway El _you’re_ so beautiful you don’t even _need_ makeup. And he might’ve stopped there, or he might’ve gone on waxing poetic as she halfheartedly nodded but the truth is that she likes makeup and nail polish, and sure, videogames and Star Wars and stealing Hop’s beers are great and all, but surely there’s room enough for everything.

Nancy gets it, and maybe that’s where the idea came from. Despite whatever complaints the Wheelers have about her attitude since she left for State, she still seems to know things in her soft, mysterious way that’s different than El, than anyone.

Even now, with her wide-set eyes focused on the powder blush swept across El’s cheeks, she seems like someone made only for serenades and rose gardens, and not at all like someone who hit a demigorgon with a nail bat.

El thinks maybe they’ll gossip like they do in the movies, but for their closeness, they’re not actually that close, so she just watches her work in the vanity mirror, more fascinated by the deft movement of her wrist than by her own transformation.

_Mike’s gonna hate this._

Nancy smirks absently. _You don’t know how much he loves you._


	4. i collect stars but have no place to put them (smell)

Almost overnight, he gets tall, his shoulders broaden out from the rest of him, and if that weren’t enough, the humidity brings out all these glorious waves of hair that weren’t there before, curling and cresting around his eyes. Once she notices it, it’s so hard _not_ to notice _all the time_. Her body’s constantly prickling, always threatening to spill.

Is this what it’s like being sixteen?

It’s going to rain. The muggy air sags, plastering his t-shirt to his back, tiny beads of sweat laced where the sun hits his neck.

That prickling urges her desperately to kiss him, fling his clothes into outer space. She ignores it and keeps ignoring it all the way home.

He’s barely shut the door when she rakes down his damp shoulder blades, presses close, breathes in the warm, salty, pine wood scent of his skin.

His belly shudders under her hand as it snakes around front.

_Hang on – Hop – what time…?_

_Not ‘til eight._

The microwave clock glows 2:00 in the dim room. Mike turns around, bends to kiss her, whirls them into the kitchen table with a distracted apology but doesn’t let up, cradles her cheeks in his hands, draws her tongue, sighs when her fingers slip down to his hipbone inside his jeans.

Folded between the boy she loves and the man he’s becoming, something inside her pulls itself tight. She tugs his shirt overhead. How to describe this feeling? It’s heady, like gasoline. It sticks between them like figs.


	5. is that what a god looked like (taste)

It’s coming back, if it ever left. The specter of evil hangs thick in the air. A dark line fractures Hawkins through the middle, from sidewalk to sky, and the fissure’s blackness pushes out a soot that settles over the town. Everything tastes burnt.

It’s nearly September, and as the nights cool, the eminent terror sinks closer, until its breath tickles the hair on their necks. The sky is at its absolute darkest when Mike and El have sex for the first time. Afterwards, in the blanket fort of his parents’ basement, he tells her he didn’t want to do it like this, not for their first time, not when he’s so scared to lose her.

He breaks down, unable to look at her, and he still can’t look when she dresses and slips away. It’s time.

Mike waits ten minutes, wallowing in his own shame, before he tears after her. He stalks the streets calling her name, swallowing the tang of bile, pedaling opposite the cars that stream away as Hawkins folds itself in half.

When he gets to the school, their dimension has all but torn itself apart. And there she is at the center of it, hair loose, hand outstretched, face streaked with blood as the world burns around her.

The school lifts up, trembling in the air. He yells out to her. How beautiful she is, staring defiantly into the eye of the universe. But when she looks back to him, she looks like a child.

**Author's Note:**

> These five shorts were my contribution to the [Stranger Senses Challenge](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/strangersenses/works) that hardcore mileven enthusiast [Molebear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molebear/) and I concocted in May (June?) of last year. You can read the parameters of the challenge (there's too many to list ah ha ha ha) as well as Mole's beautiful collection of drabbles on the page linked here.
> 
> I'm obsessed with summer, not in the sense that I love to doing summer things (I do) but more because summer stands for this really romantic time of the year - staying up late, drinking rootbeer floats, falling in love and out of love, all kinds of magic. When summer ends, it always takes a little piece of me with it.
> 
> Anyway - thanks for reading ( ˘ ³˘)♥


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